Most tragically, the church I had pastored in Dunellen NJ lost two of its members in the 9/11 event.  

Equally tragically, we misused the sympathy and support of much of the rest of the world when we decided to invade Afghanistan militarily, supposedly to chase down the al-Qaeda organization behind the event.  Anyone who has ever been to Afghanistan (as I have) would know that a huge military force would never find a relatively small and very mobile organization in the mountainous heights of Afghanistan.  

Anyway, national intelligence should have informed the White House that al-Qaeda’s base of operations was in neighboring Pakistan, not Afghanistan.  Ultimately, when Rumsfeld’s grand display of America’s new professional army sent to Afghanistan failed to do anything except throw Afghanistan into further chaos, Bush Jr. redefined the operation as one of bringing Afghanistan to democracy.  But through conquest by the American army and its European military colleagues?  

So, when I think of 9/11, I find the whole event truly tragic ... not only because of its many American (and many other) victims but also because of how it put America back in the Vietnam-era business of trying to establish democracies abroad through military conquest.

Miles Hodges is a writer, historian and political analyst who explores the question of why societies behave as they do ... especially in this matter of their rise and fall.